Re: [MacPerl] - Unix vs Mac file commands

["Douglas P. McNutt" <dmcnutt@macnauchtan.com>]

>I just got MPW with Toolserver and am
>curious how others on the list are using them with MacPerl.

IMHO Apple made a mistake by not including MPW as a fundamental part of its
operating system. Entirely too much time was spent hiding the internals of
the Macintosh from "the rest of us." A whole legion of users thinks that
there is no "DOS" command line interpreter for the Mac. False. It's just
that Apple tries to keep it a secret. You really can send an AppleEvent to
Finder and tell it to quit. It will oblige, releasing its memory, while you
run the entire OS from MPW.

For Perl, which really needs command line arguments to be flexible, there is
no better way to go. Do all of the filename parsing with MPW scripts and
then let Perl do the work IT does best.

I still haven't figured out how to drag and drop a half dozen files onto a
MacPerl Droplet and get them in the right order and there is absolutely no
way to use dash type options without MPW. MPW has real environment variables
which you can define and export.

I still find that most of the simpler things I need to do can be done with
MPW scripts more quickly than with Perl. Searching fles for patterns,
merging files, backups, global replacements in files, and the like are all
supported by MPW.

One thing that will bother UNIX trained folks is the heavy use of the 8 bit
extensions to ASCII - the option-key - characters. You do have to learn yet
another syntax for regular expressions which won't transfer to a 7 bit
environment. But then you don't have to escape so much.

MPW's editor which is always present allows you to select any text in any
window and enter it as a command. There are no editing features like "bring
back the last command for editing." You just use the mouse. There is no word
wrapping and that may bother you, but you can always prepare a script to do
that kind of thing.

The latest version of MPW uses color in the editor to highlight reserved
words and comments and yes, you can declare a file to be type PERL and MPW
will pick out the right words.

-> From the USA. The only socialist country that refuses to admit it. <-

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